1.

2 History of Reservoir Engineering

Crude oil, natural gas, and water are the substances that are of chief concern to
petroleum engineers. Although these substances can occur as solids or semisolids
such as paraffin, asphaltine, or gas-hydrate, usually at lower temperatures and
pressures, in the reservoir and in the wells, they occur mainly as fluids, either
in the vapor (gaseous) or in the liquid phase or, quite commonly, both. Even where
solid materials are used, as in drilling, cementing, and fracturing, they are
handled as fluids or slurries. The separation of well or reservoir fluid into
liquid and gas (vapor) phases depends mainly on temperature, pressure, and the
fluid composition. The state or phase of a fluid in the reservoir usually changes
with decreasing pressure as the reservoir fluid is being produced. The temperature
in the reservoir stays relatively constant during the production. In many cases,
the state or phase in the reservoir is quite unrelated to the state of the fluid
when it is produced at the surface, due to changes in both pressure and temperature
as the fluid rises to the surface. The precise knowledge of the behavior of crude
oil, natural gas, and water, singly or in combination, under static conditions or
in motion in the reservoir rock and in pipes and under changing temperature and
pressure, is the main concern of reservoir engineers.

As early as 1928, reservoir engineers were giving serious consideration to gas-

energy relationships and recognized the need for more precise information
concerning physical conditions in wells and underground reservoirs. Early progress
in oil recovery methods made it obvious that computations made from wellhead or
surface data were generally misleading. Sclater and Stephenson described the first
recording bottom-hole pressure gauge and a mechanism for sampling fluids under
pressure in wells.3 It is interesting that this reference defines bottom-hole data
as measurements of pressure, temperature, gas-oil ratio, and the physical and
chemical natures of the fluids. The need for accurate bottom-hole pressures was
further emphasized when Millikan and Sidwell described the first precision pressure
gauge and pointed out the fundamental importance of bottom-hole pressures to
reservoir engineers in determining the most efficient oil recovery methods and
lifting procedures.4 With this contribution, the engineer was able to measure the
most important basic data for reservoir performance calculations: reservoir
pressure.

The study of the properties of rocks and their relationship to the fluids they
contain in both the static and flowing states is called petrophysics. Porosity,
permeability, fluid saturations and distributions, electrical conductivity of both
the rock and the fluids, pore structure, and radioactivity are some of the more
important petrophysical properties of rocks. Fancher, Lewis, and Barnes made one of
the earliest petrophysical studies of reservoir rocks in 1933, and in 1934, Wycoff,
Botset, Muskat, and Reed developed a method for measuring the permeability of
reservoir rock samples based on the fluid flow equation discovered by Darcy in
1856.5,6 Wycoff and Botset made a significant advance in their studies of the
simultaneous flow of oil and water and of gas and water in unconsolidated sands.7
This work was later extended to consolidated sands and other rocks, and in 1940
Leverett and Lewis reported research on the three-phase flow of oil, gas, and
water.8

It was recognized by the pioneers in reservoir engineering that before reservoir

volumes of oil and gas in place could be calculated, the change in the physical
properties of bottom-hole samples of the reservoir fluids with pressure would be
required. Accordingly, in 1935, Schilthuis described a bottom-hole sampler and a
method of measuring the physical properties of the samples obtained.9 These
measurements included the pressure-volume-temperature relations, the saturation or
bubble-point pressure, the total quantity of gas dissolved in the oil, the
quantities of gas liberated under various conditions of temperature and pressure,
and the shrinkage of the oil resulting from the release of its dissolved gas from
solution. These data enabled the development of certain useful equations, and they
also provided an essential correction to the volumetric equation for calculating
oil in place.

The next significant development was the recognition and measurement of connate
water saturation, which was considered indigenous to the formation and remained to
occupy a part of the pore space after oil or gas accumulation.10,11 This
development further explained the poor oil and gas recoveries in low permeability
sands with high connate water saturation and introduced the concept of water, oil,
and gas saturations as percentages of the total pore space. The measurement of
water saturation provided another important correction to the volumetric equation
by considering the hydrocarbon pore space as a fraction of the total pore volume.